Feuilletons & Causeries on a Variety of Subjects

Tag Archives: twitter

There is something deeply troubling about a President that spends the wee hours of the morning on the shitter while tweeting his unedited dissatisfactions at length. There are two possible solutions:

Get rid of the President.

Get rid of Twitter

If Trump were dipped into hot tar, coated with chicken feathers, and ridden out of Washington on a rail, we probably would not have to cringe at his disruptive Tweets. Ditto if society decided that Twitter as a medium of expression is best allowed to die—unsung and unloved. It would even be better if both options were put into action.

Never before has the United States had a leader whose every written (or even verbal) communication causes nothing but dismay or disgust.

That leads me to an interesting thought. If there were a Trump Presidential Library, what would go into it? There would be the Tweets, of course, and a series of Presidential Proclamations whose principal purpose was to undo the accomplishments of previous administrations. And also, who would pay to visit such a library? I suspect that even the 40% of the population that supports Trump would give such an institution a wide berth. (Bad-asses don’t read.)

The Trump Administration reminds me of the Coronavirus. It’s something I am dead set against, but prefer not to think about.

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Actor Jim Carrey looks to be on the point of starting a brilliant new career, as an Anti-Trump Twitter Troll. The tweet that went with the above picture is:

Jim Carrey

✔@JimCarrey

Dear Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery @NPG, I know it’s early but I’d like to submit this as the official portrait of our 45th President, Donald J. Trump. It’s called, ‘You Scream. I Scream. Will We Ever Stop Screaming?’

All who enter his crooked carnival with integrity are doomed to leave without it. General Kelly has been trampled by his own compromise. Who dares be the next to ride the carousel of fools?! Muahahaha!!!

Finally, I couldn’t pass up this attack on the current Speaker of the House of Representatives:

Paul Ryan

And the tweet thereunto appertaining:

Jim Carrey

✔@JimCarrey

Tone deaf Paul Ryan brags that his tax bill is going to make low income voters an extra $1.50 a week! That’s almost enough for a box of Band-Aids. Who needs healthcare? WAKE UP REPUBLICAN BASE! You are parked on the tracks, cheering for the train that’s about to run you down. ;^P

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I figure if we can get a troupe of Mexican dancers to render the Trumpf’s tiny hands inoperable by dancing on them with their stiletto heels, the people of the United States would breathe a sigh of relief. Never before has a president’s unedited prejudices gone straight from his putative brain out to the world at large without any editing. Things have come to such a pass that I think it were best of Twitter were put out of business.

It’s not just covfefethat worries me: Trumpf and Kim Jong-Un of the DPRK are waging a constantly escalating war of threats that could take us to the brink of nuclear war. I am worried less about what Kim could do to us than what China and Russia would do if we attacked North Korea. Even now, we are sending bombers in international airspace just east of the Korean peninsula.

Our president is so out of control that no one can rein him in. Even Kelly and his other generals are helpless when Trumpf is alone at night with one hand on his cell phone and the other on the launch button.

So let’s get the Mexican dancers out there. It would be most appropriate.

34.052234-118.243685

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I am not one to like Twitter, especially as misused by the Trumpf as a way to short-circuit rational discourse. Sometimes, it is good to have one’s ideas overturned, in this case by a talented writer/photographer named Teju Cole. Although born in the U.S., Cole was raised in Nigeria and returned to this country to attend college. The following is a series of Tweets written under the name @tejucole that were published by The Atlantic in 2012. The subject? The White Savior Industrial Complex. Here are the tweets, min order:

1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.

5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Teju Cole

These seven Tweets showed that the medium has the capability of carrying on discourse rather than just shutting it down. But then, not everyone is as witty and perspicacious as Teju Cole. I will write more about him as I investigate his books and photography.

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About a year ago, I signed up for Twitter. But then, when I found out I was supposed to “follow” three existing Twitter accounts, I suddenly lost interest, so I never finished my application. About once a week, Twitter e-mails me to finalize my application … but I never will.

Why? A certain Prezidenchul candidate has adopted Twitter as his preferred method of communicating with the world, and I suddenly saw what was wrong with the whole setup. Standing at the microphone (broken or not), Donald Trump thinks in limited bursts of thought that are compatible with the character limit on tweets. He jumps from one tweet-length position to another. This effectively prevents him for discussing such nasty things as details that may substantiate his short ideo-bursts.

On the other hand, these same tweets endear him to his fans, who are not into such mundane things as facts. They are, if anything, practitioners of identity politics: Trump re-connects with his base, and since they identify with him, that connection is all that counts.

When you go into details, you could wind up betraying your base. So, the idea is to just skip around, making short promisoids without pinning himself down on any one of them. Promisoids good, facts bad!

So I think I will never complete my Twitter application process. And here, in considerably more than 140 characters, is why.

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Several months ago, I started signing up for Twitter. When I was asked to name three Twitter accounts I was interested in following, I couldn’t think of a single one. I just wasn’t that interested in following anyone. And what would I tweet? There was that 140-character limitation that encouraged users to murder the English language. And when Twitter and tweets were in the news, they were usually from political or entertainment figures like Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian—on whom I do not care to waste my time.

What is more, that whole hashtag convention struck me as forcing one’s thoughts into other people’s channels. Nope, not for me.